The public event was the highlight of a weekend meeting of the National Network on Cuba (NNOC), the second held this year. The Network has several dozen affiliates across the United States that carry out work in opposition to Washington's policy towards Cuba. During deliberations over the weekend the NNOC adopted a resolution condemning the U.S. government's war on Afghanistan.

Nearly 100 people attended the speakout for the Miami 5, as the Cubans are now known. They have been in jail since their arrest over a year ago, mostly in solitary confinement. Several panelists at the meeting spoke out not only in defense of these imprisoned Cubans but also in opposition to Washington's war on the people of Afghanistan as well as the cynical "anti-terrorism" campaign the government is using to whip up pro-imperialist patriotism and support for the war.

The forum panel included Maggie Becker, the companion of Antonio Guerrero, one of the Miami 5; Walter Turner, president of the Board of Directors of Global Exchange, and a leader of the Black Radical Congress as well as the Jericho Movement; Gloria La Riva, representing the National Free the Miami 5 Committee; Art Heitzer of the National Lawyers Guild Cuba Subcommittee; Argiris Malapanis representing the Miami Coalition to End the U.S. Embargo of Cuba; and Fernando García, First Secretary of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington.

Becker pointed to some of the important facts around the conviction of the five Cubans in Miami, and their courage and integrity in confronting the frame-up despite the enormous U.S. government pressure that was brought to bear in an attempt to break each of the defendants. She and Roberto Maestas of the La Raza Cultural Center in Seattle read several poems written by Antonio Guerrero.

On June 8, a federal court in Miami convicted three Cuban citizens--Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, and Antonio Guerrero--of "conspiracy to commit espionage," and "conspiracy to act as an unregistered foreign agent." They could face life in prison. Two others, Fernando González and René González, were convicted of "conspiracy to act as an unregistered foreign agent."

Hernández was also convicted on unprecedented charges of "conspiracy to commit murder," in which the prosecution claimed he was responsible for the deaths of four pilots who were members of the rightist Cuban-American group, Brothers to the Rescue. The pilots were shot down by the Cuban air force in 1996, after repeated and provocative violations of Cuban air space, despite warnings. The prosecution justified the charges by claiming Hernández had provided the Cuban government with flight information about the Brothers to the Rescue operation. The sentencing of the five, originally set for early fall, is now scheduled for mid-December.

As a June 20 statement by the Cuban government pointed out, the five were in Miami to "discover and report on terrorist plans hatched against our people" in Florida by counterrevolutionary opponents of the Cuban Revolution. Cuban leaders have organized a campaign to win the release of the five, including widespread coverage in the Cuban press.  
 
Targeting workers' rights
In addition to targeting revolutionary Cuba, the U.S. government investigation, multiple arrests, and eventual trial of the five were riddled with violations of workers' rights in the United States. The prosecution did not present any evidence that the defendants stole or transmitted to Cuba any U.S. military secrets. The FBI violated the Fourth Amendment right of the defendants to protection from illegal search and seizure by repeatedly breaking into their houses over a three-year period prior to their arrests. The evidence presented by the prosecution was based on electronic files FBI agents claimed they copied from computers of the defendants during these break-ins.

The judge refused a defense motion to move the trial out of Miami, even after several potential jurors--Cuban Americans and Latinos in particular--disqualified themselves for fear of recriminations if they voted "not guilty."

Gloria La Riva spoke of the support work organized by the National Free the Miami 5 Committee, which is sponsored by dozens of organizations across the United States, many of them affiliates of the NNOC. She urged participants to organize meetings to defend the five and send information about these activities to the defendants for whom knowledge of the campaign being waged on behalf of their freedom is so essential. She also denounced the ongoing investigation by the FBI and arrests of other Cubans on similar charges, including that of Ana Belen Montes, a senior analyst for the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, for allegedly providing classified information to the Cuban government. FBI break-ins into Montes's apartment and electronic eavesdropping are also featured in government actions against her.

Walter Turner spoke primarily about an international conference that has been called by the Organization of Solidarity of the Peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America for March 2002. He urged participants to build the international conference, noting that the Miami 5 case as well as defense of Puerto Rican independence activists incarcerated by the United States and other U.S. political prisoners like Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu-Jamal will be part of its agenda.

"The frame-up of the Miami 5 is not only an attempt to smear the Cuban Revolution but an attack on the rights of working people here in the United States," said Argiris Malapanis. The gross violations of the Fourth Amendment rights of the Miami 5, he pointed out, are of a piece with the detentions of nearly 800 people--many of them immigrant workers--by the federal government in connection with the September 11 bombings of the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Many of them are being held indefinitely, in blatant violation of constitutional protections, and there is a virtual blackout in the big-business media about what is happening to them. "These roundups are part of the increased cop harassment and arbitrary searches of working people at ports, bus terminals, and train stations," Malapanis noted.

Malapanis announced plans by the Miami Coalition to End the U.S. Embargo of Cuba to organize a public forum in Miami to coincide with the sentencing date in December. It will build on a successful conference that took place in that city September 22 and seek to broaden support for the Miami 5. Working people resisting assaults by the employers and their government--like the Charleston Five dockworkers fighting a cop frame-up for defending their picket lines, and others fighting police brutality--are among the most important potential allies of the Miami 5, Malapanis said. He urged all participants to organize similar meetings across the United States in the coming months.  
 
Attacks on Cuban Revolution
Fernando García, First Secretary of the Cuban Interests Section, was the final speaker. He thanked the meeting participants for their work to get out the truth about the Miami 5 as well as other efforts opposing U.S. government policies directed against the people of Cuba. He pointed to the 40-year-long record of terrorist attacks against the Cuban Revolution, including the 1976 hijacking and bombing of a Cubana Airlines flight off the coast of Barbados, organized by counterrevolutionary groups operating in the United States with support from Washington. The perpetrators and masterminds of that terrorist attack, which resulted in the deaths of all 73 people on board, worked for the CIA. One of them, Orlando Bosch who is widely credited with planning the attack, walks free in the streets of Miami to this day.

Closing the evening's program was Boston poet Richard Cambridge, who performed a much appreciated reading of a number of his poems based on observations of life in Cuba and the effects of the U.S. government policies towards the people of that country.

The NNOC meeting, in which some 75 activists around the country participated, many of them representing local coalitions and other organizations working to end U.S. government attempts to overturn the Cuban Revolution, discussed the numerous campaigns its affiliates are involved in. The meeting also discussed and adopted a resolution in response to the U.S. government's war against the people of Afghanistan and accelerating "anti-terrorism" campaign following the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

The resolution adopted by the NNOC included an "appeal to all Americans to join us in opposing the prosecution and incarceration of the five Cubans imprisoned in Miami, whose only crime has been to monitor and attempt to prevent this U.S.-based terrorism against the Cuban people. At a time when the American people have been made particularly sensitive to the human toll of such terrorist acts, those who have fought against such acts should be viewed as heroes, not as criminals." [See full text of resolution on page7.]

Jacob Perasso is a member of the Young Socialists.
 
 
Related article:
'We condemn the war waged against Afghanistan'  
 
 
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